Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday July 24, 2014 @05:36AM
from the mask-and-gloves dept.

symbolset writes in with the latest about an ebola outbreak spreading across West Africa. The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to monitor the evolution of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. The current epidemic trend of EVD outbreak in Sierra Leone and Liberia remains serious, with 67 new cases and 19 deaths reported July 15-17, 2014. These include suspect, probable, and laboratory-confirmed cases. The EVD outbreak in Guinea continues to show a declining trend, with no new cases reported during this period. Critical analyses and review of the current outbreak response is being undertaken to inform the process of developing prioritized national operational plans. Effective implementation of the prioritized plans will be vital in reversing the current trend of EVD outbreak, especially in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

It also doesn't transmit very easily. So far there are no known cases of it being transmitted in a plane or airport, despite several known Ebola cases having flown on planes. In each case everyone who had flown with them was monitored, but nobody developed the illness.

Actually, it does transmit fairly easily.From the WHO:"Ebola then spreads in the community through human-to-human transmission, with infection resulting from direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids. "

Wow. I thought my airplane travel was rough. Do you really routinely have "direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids" while flying?

Actually Ebola can be transmitted through the air. During the initial discovery and research into the Ebola, there were two major groups involved: the CDC and USAMRIID (CDC's military counterpart).

The CDC's lead researcher of Ebola did a lot of onsite visits in Africa with patients and never contracted the virus, so the CDC's stance is that it is not an air born illness. The team from USAMRIID conducted tests on Ebola in a closed environment with an uninfected control group. The control group was in the same room as the infected group but separated by cages on either side of the room so there was no physical contact between groups. The entire control group got infected, so if you ask USAMRIID, its air born.

The result isn't surprising do to the nature of Ebola. The virus destroys all tissues including lung tissue. Any virus that is exposed to the air in the lungs has the chance of being air born.

Research in 2012 also confirmed this with cross species air born contamination in a controlled environment.

There is some research that suggests that Ebola Zaire can transmit from monkeys to pigs without contact, and could possibly be transmitted from pigs to humans. One farm worker is believed to have contracted Ebola Reston (which is not lethal to humans) from an infected pig.

The black plague had a much lower mortality rate than ebola does. The plague also had a very good vector in the fleas on rodents. It wasn't spread as much by human to human transmission as it was by flea bite. Also, the statement that viruses with a very high mortality rate tend to be self limiting is indeed true - although the slower the time from infection to death the faster the spread. Ebola kills very quickly and that limits the spread significantly. It will need to develop to be less quickly lethal in

The problem is that people move around... a lot. Ebola has an incubation period of up to 21 days so that gives an infected person lots of symptom free time to travel to visit his neighboring village or go to the city or get on a plane to visit relatives anywhere in the world.

This is why Ebola is dangerous. It doesn't matter how long it takes for someone to go from "sick" to "dead", as once they get sick, they probably won't be traveling. On the other hand, you have three weeks of incubation to traipse around the world and get somewhere quite distant from the original vector, then get sick, and now all of a sudden you have a handful of cases in Toronto followed by a handful of cases three weeks later in Mexico City... and so on.

To follow on from the other comment.You're faced with people who you've never seen, look quite different than you, and turn up in suits that cover their entire body.This happens shortly after, or even before the community notices an issue - as they are surveying populations nearby.Then people start dying, and these people who don't speak your language want to take the bodies of your loved ones, and desecrate them.

Add to this that education in these places is basically non-existant in many cases.It's no wonder that people can come to the conclusion that the health workers are causing the disease.

Especially given the centuries long history of exploitation. Fake vaccination programs by the CIA to fine OBL haven't helped either.

Note to people not having a clue of what the parent poster meant: this is a reference to the excellent game Plague Inc. available on Android and possible Apple. If you haven't tried it, give it a shot.

Unfortunately the schools ahd hospitals were destroyed by the rebels in the recent civil way. The rebels were a bunch of drug-crazed gangsters using child soldiers to.steal the gold and diamond mines.(The entire mines, not just the produce).
It was American money that funded the rebels, and the Europeans that insisted the government "negotiate" with the rebels as if they were a legitimate democratic opposition. This is the equivalent of asking the Italian government to negotiate with the Mafia. Only worse: The rebels knew they would go to hell for crimes against humanity if caught, so they were prepared to go to any extreme to avoid being caught - chopping random limbs off men women and children without mercy in drug-fueled rampages was only a part of it.

In other words, a relatively nasty government. So what are you going to do about it? And why treat them any differently than say Zimbabwe or North Korea?

A lack of education about health care and a lack of access to healthcare for poor people is not a bad habit. Evolution will do nothing to fix that issue. About the most you'll get is a population that might eventually have a higher resistance to Ebola.

I am not a virologist or an epidemiologist (nor do I play one on TV) but I always seem to remember the risk of a larger pandemic from Ebola or other similar severe hemorrhagic fevers was reduced due to the nature of these illnesses having a rapid onset and severity which limits the ability of infected people to be ambulatory and infect other people.

What I wonder and maybe worry about is a long-term low-grade outbreak leading to mutations which increase the amount of time the infected might be able to spread

Low percentage of asymptomatic cases is also a factor slowing the spread: almost everyone who has an Ebola virus infection develops a serious illness, so there are few (possibly no) asymptomatic carriers who could unwittingly spread it.

From what I have read about ebola (EVD-- whatever), it has an incubation period of 21 days and its early symptoms are easily confused with the flu. Just about everywhere other than Antarctic research stations is within 21 days travel time of west Africa.

Mecca is going to be an epidemiologist's nightmare this year. Lots of Muslims in west Africa, and some infected Boko Haram nuts might think that they were doing Allah's will in bringing the disease to impure muslims and infidels. Sort of like the way the US

Well incubation period is somewhat different. Also an issue, but not the same one as asymptomatic carriers. Some viruses have completely asymptomatic carriers, who can harbor it for years without themselves being significantly affected, which makes long-distance spread a lot easier. Ebola doesn't seem to have that.

Although Ebola does have a reservoir in rats, who carry it asymptomatically. No idea what the odds of it spreading via that route are.

I know a hard working, idealistic young doctor from Long Island NY who went to Africa two weeks ago to try and help. He came back very disillusioned, stymied at every attempt to treat patients there by government officials. He told me his parents were very afraid he would become sick and didn't want him to go, but this man feels he has a higher calling to treat the sick, higher than making money. A good man who I'm proud to know.

The story [telegraph.co.uk] I read before this one was about a malaria vaccine that was developed in the early 90's, was known to be effective by '97, and has been awaiting approval since then, while ten million people died from the disease.

Really, though, it was only ten million families who had to lose their loved ones - that's a small price to pay for the paperwork being in order.

If you had actually read the article you reference, you would see that the delay in malaria vaccine is to to the fact that the many trials have been failures and even this latest version is not very effective for not very much time. The "paperwork" delay in this case is due to the fact that it doesn't work.

Being ignorant of modern medicine is not a genetically-encoded trait. So, despite your best attempts to rationalize it, no, there's nothing good about people dying in this way.

Moreover, you sound like you consider yourself somehow superior to the people who are dying of the disease, though you are undoubtedly too cowardly to actually come out and say it even as AC. You're protected by geography and the fact that the virus doesn't appear to have gotten into a major international airport. At the momen

Except people who get viruses die when they are shot. You don't even have to shoot them in the head. And real people don't cooperate in a herd like manner to climb walls even when they're NOT infected with some disease.

And real viruses have incubation periods long enough that you don't have scenarios where if Brad Pitt doesn't lop your arm off 5 seconds after your hand is bitten you instantly turn into a bloodthirsty rage zombie with a 100% infection rate when you bite someone else.

Not the case. Reston virus, an ebola strain was airborne, and research labs from various countries, include USA and Canada have shown that ariborne ebola can be found.
However there are no reports that this strain is airborne, or at least the governments of the world are not letting that information out in fear of all the problems that would bring........

It was also not infectious to people. And some even think the airborne aspect as suspect given the locales and condition of those same locales, shit flinging moneys can transfer things through air but that isn't normally called airborne.;)Given the extremely few virus particles needed that mechanism could even explain the transfer between rooms, infected particulate can transfer surprisingly far.

Note that this assumes the information of the air circulation system being unfiltered and that doors between roo

Can't really avoid it since you can get it from touching surfaces contaminated with the virus. Think of an airplane seat or a public shop or any public place. You can wall yourself up at home but what happens when you run out of food?

"A virus with high mortaility and rapid spread will rapidly kill all susceptible individuals within it's catchment area, so it's likely that such things have never really gotten off the evolutionary drawing board."

Generally speaking I agree, but only when the virus is lethal to all susceptible individuals.
If the virus is non-lethal to some susceptible individuals then those individuals could become carriers (a reservoir where the virus can continue reproduce but does not kill its host). Carriers are how a virus can have a high mortaility and rapid spread without becoming an evolutionary dead-end.

In the case of Ebola I have heard that it is suspected that fruit bats are carriers. If it is true that fruit bats are

Or a whole lot less, considering how many other TLA's there are for EVD. It takes to the third page of google for there to be a page on ebola when searching for EVD. But if you say Ebola everyone knows what you are talking about.

Now I can understand wanting to abbreviate "ebola hemorrhagic fever", which is way more descriptive.

I worked in public health informatics for many years, and it's a longstanding tradition to use three letter codes. I think this is the legacy of old systems which provided three or four character fields for codes, but it certainly speeds things along when you're keying data into a spreadsheet.

The tradition isn't formalized, and so it's application is somewhat irregular, but it's important in this case to realize that public health surveillance makes a strong distinction between a *disease* (a disorder of s

From your sarcasm, I'm going to assume that you'd rather that AIDS was characterised as a disease of gay people and minorities who should therefore be ostracised, it wasn't spoken about, and where its very existence was denied?

That's what happened in the 1980s and it caused the fucking problem in the first place.

From your link:
"MSM [gay males] accounted for 52% of all people living with HIV infection in 2009, the most recent year these data are available"[snip]"and 63% of all new infections"

So it isn't hard to extrapolate and guess that some date before 2009, the "gay male" segment was below half (as now, it's almost exactly half), but the gay male segment grew faster than others recently to overtake it.

The last time I had looked, straight people still lead the gay-male category, but it has been a few years. An

They don't want to keep the disease out. They want to keep people with TB out of the health care system. If you were diagnosed as a tourist, they'd throw you out. If you are diagnosed as a prospective migrant, they throw you out. If you are diagnosed as a resident, they treat you. It isn't about the disease, but the treatment costs.

My daughter was born in NZ in a maternity center, we didn't have to pay a single thing. Back then we still had tourist state. So I don't think you're correct. But I have no idea how much TB treatment costs. In Mexico, where I live right now, in order to get married one has to be tested for HIV. I think that's a sane thing to do. No health tests where required for migration, if I recall correctly. Anyway, my point is: if you test immigrants only, it's pointless.

Was the baby a citizen? I thought the rules were any legally-born child (not to an illegal entrant) was a citizen. And that was another reason they kicked them out more recently. But those rules also changed between your time here and mine. I just didn't follow too closely, as they didn't affect me.

When you only talk in sarcasm, you say nothing. Your opinion is only as valid as the justifications you can make for it. Apparently, that's nothing. So we'll treat your opinion with all the respect you deserve.

While terrorists have and will claim victory over causing economic damage, that's not their goal, and it never was. Their cult doesn't promise them forty grapes/virgins if they total a million dollars in lost GDP or anything like that.

That's why the second terrorist group to try this technique will probably use the more difficult but effective technique of infecting the shrapnel rods that a BUK explosion scatters through the nearby target, including the bodies of any humans. If this had happened in MH17 it would have, given the looting that occurred after the crash, been a very efficient way of slaughtering the whole Ukrainian separatist army and infecting any number of Russian "advisers."

Ebola isn't airborne, but there could be an airborne delivery mechanism created. Cook up 3 gallons of Jello. Spread lots of Ebola in it in the final cooling stages. Put that Jello in w warhead. Launch it somewhere. When it explodes, the Jello will act as a protection for the more delicate virus, and the infected Jello "dust" could be airborne transmission of Ebola.

I'm not saying it would work. I'm saying that unusual low-tech solutions can have unexpected results, and I wouldn't want to bet everyone's